Thursday, July 19, 2007

Life in a Metro and Inter-cropping patterns!

Watched this movie “Life in a Metro” some time back….

Love, lies, lust – yes, that’s what the movie is all about and as clichéd as it could get in an urban milieu. At the risk of generalizing, probably that’s what urban life does to most of us – perpetuate clichés!?

A bored husband while driving his car, laments how his wife (loving wife of yesteryears) does not interest him anymore, is just so boring, and how they do nothing but argue and argue all the time. He feels, there is not even one minute of peace and happiness anymore with his wife. Hence, he (boss in the office) has an affair with a female employee, justifying the boredom and happiness aspect to himself. (“I’m not hurting her, I am only pursuing what gives me happiness! Is that really a problem to any one?”).

The female employee is none other than the best friend/ roomie of the wife’s sister, a 29 year old single, independent lady 'searching for true love' (!) and marriage (exactly in that order) in
the big, bad city of Mumbai.

Interested in the female employee is another guy – who reports to the Boss and is happy to do anything and everything to make his boss happy, so long as he gets his promotion and his pay hike. And besides working at the office, he has another occupation – giving his apartment to all the couples in office having affairs - outside their commitments/marriage.

The wife goes to visit her naani – the naani’s story is another angle with her long lost love returning to her, after ditching her to go the USA. In the course of her weekly visits to the Naani, the wife runs into a handsome theatre artist – single after a bad marriage (When asked – “so who left whom?”, he replies with a straight face, “Love left us!”)

Too confusing? Well, it was indeed perplexing and challenging to keep following up who’s sleeping with whom and their reasons for doing so.

The ending is true hindi movie style - the female employee ditches the boss and goes to the apartment guy who loves her. (Finally, he does not need to give his apartment to other couples). The husband, as his female employee has ditched him, returns back teary eyed to his wife! The naani and her long lost love enjoy some days of togetherness before one of them passes away. The sister gets married to her true love just when he is about to get married to some other girl his mom has chosen.

Is “Easy come, easy go” the name of the game, I wonder….

No, says K, and rambles on as to how adultery/infidelity – be it either in a relationship or marriage - is like intercropping in agriculture! (The practice of cultivating more than one crop in the same land area).

In a coffee plantation, coffee is the main crop, but along the sides/rows of the plantation, other crops like cardamom, orange and pepper are planted for shade purposes. They vie for the same water and sunlight with the main coffee crop and the growth between the main coffee crop and the shade crop is symbiotic. Ultimately, the coffee crop grows well due to the shade provided by the side crop and vice versa. Before we know it, the season is over.

Moral of the Story – if you want a bumper harvest of the main crop, ensure to have good supporting side crops! :)

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